ix, 317 pages : 25 cm

"The varied experience of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, with its difficult and fractured history, is reflected in this distinctive and lively collection. The contributors to Inside Babylon show how employers and police, psychiatrists and welfare services, help to channel black people into residential and occupational ghettoes. Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi analyse the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. Going beyond the familiar prisms of race relations and reductionist class analysis they illuminate the radicalizing dynamic of British capitalism in the postwar period. Errol Francis provides a shocking account of the experience of black people at the hands of psychiatrists in Britain. Cecil Gutzmore finds the Notting Hill carnival to be a litmus test of racist formations in both the media and the state, as well as evidence of the resilience of the black community. Amina Mama and Claudette Williams explore the position of women in black communities while Gail Lewis focuses on their characteristic patterns of employment. In a powerful concluding essay Winston James charts the unfolding of a new Afro-Caribbean identity in Britain and debunks the notion that racist structures by themselves create a homogeneous black community."--Publisher

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-305) and index

Post-war migration and the Industrial Reserve Army / Clive Harris -- The 1951-55 conservative government and the racialization of black immigration / Bob Carter, Clive Harris and Shirley Joshi -- Black women's employment and the British economy / Gail Lewis -- Woman abuse in London's black communities / Amina Mama -- Black women and the police: a place where the law is not upheld / Amina Mama -- We are a natural part of many different struggles: black women organizing / Claudette Williams -- Indo-Caribbean experience in Britain: overlooked, miscategorized, misunderstood / Steven Vertovec -- Psychiatric racism and social police: black people and the psychiatric services / Errol Francis -- Carnival, the state and the black masses in the United Kingdom / Cecil Gutzmore -- Migration, racism and identity formation: the Caribbean experience in Britain / Winston James

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